A former Cracker Barrel employee recalls how she was once wrongfully accused of stealing tips on the job.
The saga played out on TikTok, on the clarisaithink (@clarisaithink) account. The video, posted Monday, has garnered a little more than 56,000 views. In the video, she talks about her history working for Cracker Barrel.
She reveals, “It was a little bit more religious, and people were a little bit more uptight, a little bit more close-knit. So, like, I already was kind of the outsider, but things were going OK.”
But then, she had a misstep. “Month three maybe, my ex came to pick me up from work, and I was like, ‘Oh, I gotta go! My girlfriend’s here,’” she says. “That was a mistake, because almost immediately, some of the vibes changed.”
What happened after the revelation?
She then reveals, “This one manager that was already kind of on the fence about me, like, … like, made it very well known that he did not like me.” She claims she was given bad sections and bad shifts, saying, “If there was, like, money to be made, he made sure I didn’t make it.”
She reports that eventually, this manager was focused on how tips were going missing from servers at the restaurant. “And it was always interesting,” she observed. “So only ever when this manager worked, somebody would like leave a five on the table. And by the time the waitress would go back to grab it, it would be gone. And that would be a consistent issue.”
The creator said it even happened to her once or twice, but the manager began to intimate that she was the thief. He accused her even though some of the tip-swiping happened on days when she didn’t work.
He said things like, “Isn’t it weird that tips only go missing when you’re working?” around other employees.
She assessed, “Clearly, he was trying to imply I was the one stealing tips.” He finally confronted her directly, saying if another tip went missing he would fire her. A tip went missing on a day she wasn’t working, and he fired her anyway.
What happened after
She then shares what happened after she was dismissed from Cracker Barrel.
“Lo and behold, it comes out, turns out he was doing it all along,” she says. “And then there’s a class action lawsuit, not even like 6 months later, for lost wages and for them cutting your hours without paying you, for them changing your hours without saying anything, and also for stealing tips. Who signed up for that class action lawsuit?”
She reveals, “It’s been like 8 years now, and it’s just now settled.”
A follow-up video, answering a question about how much the suit brought her, reveals that the check should be arriving any week after lawyers notified her in August. The suit included more than 300 plaintiffs, and she expects the lawyers to take a significant portion of what she described as a “multimillion-dollar settlement.”
Cracker Barrel’s history
In August 2023, a lawsuit from Top Class Actions in Tennessee alleged that the company “failed to compensate its restaurant employees during all their work hours, causing their pay to be below the legal minimum wage,” by not paying for off-the-clock work before and after their shifts.
There’s also a 2021 account of a suit that alleges Cracker Barrel underpaid tipped workers. That suit contended, “Cracker Barrel is essentially taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to make its servers work more for less money.”
Mashed published an article on Jan. 31, 2023, titled, “The Biggest Scandals In Cracker Barrel History.” That article commenced with the observation, “Cracker Barrel has had an almost shocking number of scandals, lawsuits, and accusations leveled at them, especially considering they’re a relatively new chain.”
It then went on to enumerate headlines published since the chain launched in 1969 with a single Tennessee location. That included a 2004 lawsuit filed by the NAACP alleging shocking racism allegations and a subsequent investigation by the Justice Department.
@clarisaithink I was fired in 2018 and I think 2019 was when the suit was filed so yeah it was five years I was right. And Mirzad, I hope you know I will never forget that you did that😂 #crackerbarrel #server #whyisued #fired #storytime #sued #fyp #foryou #foryoupage ♬ original sound – clarisaithink
The Daily Dot reached out to the creator via TikTok direct message and to Cracker Barrel via email.
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